March 8, 2009

If you listen, for example, to the complete session for the group’s third single, “From Me to You,” you’ll discover that the song wasn’t quite finished when they began recording it. It wasn’t until the fifth take that they added an instrumental break, and toward the end of the session (on takes 8 through 13), they tried no fewer than four approaches to the introduction: a sung vocal, a hummed vocal, a sung version with a falsetto descant, and a version with harmonica. In the end, they combined two of these (the first vocal version and the harmonica) to produce what you hear on the single.

You could learn things like that. Or maybe you already know it. It's easily learned from reading books. But then, why go to school to learn anything that you could learn on your own from reading books? Learning from professors should be something more, right? (I'm thinking: like being questioned socratically.) Aside from learning, there is credentialing. What is the job for a master of Beatles studies? You can always go to law school. Just major in something, anything, and you can. I, for example, majored in painting. Studio painting. But it would be better if you Beatles majors went on to write about music somewhere. And if you do, don't forget there is a uniform for the Beatles major. It's like this:

I've got to admit it's getting betterA little better all the timeIt can't get no worseI have to admit it's getting better, it's getting better Since you've been mine

Me used to be a angry young manMe hiding me head in the sandYou gave me the word, I finally heardI'm doing the best that I can

I've got to admit it's getting betterA little better all the time (It can't get no worse)I have to admit its getting better, it's getting better Since you've been mine (Getting so much better all the time)"

He don't want to go to school and learn to read and writeJust sits around the house and plays the rock and roll music all nightWell, he put thumbtacks on teacher's chairPuts chewing gum in little girl's hairNow, junior, behave yourself

"But then, why go to school to learn anything that you could learn on your own from reading books?"

Excellent question. Having taken a 'course' is meaningless, as degree holders are no brighter than someone with an interest in a chosen field and courses quite typically teach material that's already dated. Especially true in the sciences.

"Aside from learning, there is credentialing."

One can get credentialed by taking a test without getting a degree. In some states you can even take the bar, correct? The worst applicants I've dealt with in IT were college educated. Didn't know a damned thing about working.

Strangely enough, in the novel Have Space-Suit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein used the term beetle tracking to describe the sort of typically un-serious courses that the protagonist was expected to take in high school; Heinlein was just as disparaging of the same sort of courses encountered in the typical American college campus.

I was an English major. I vaguely remember having to take a course in Milton. I don't think I got anything out of it. I suppose it showed a prospective employer that I could master a body of learning and write a passable paper on something for which I had zero interest. That was certainly something I had to do a lot of during my working life. College and work were both a plentiful waste of time. You had to pay money to be bored in college, and at work they payed you for that experience.....Some find it preferible to rule in hell than serve in heaven. And others find it preferible to be bored and broke in college than bored and affluent at work. I pass no judgement on saints and demons, nor students and analysts. My liberal art education has given me the Sophoclean insight that, in the end, everyone gets screwed and that it's all relative.